Some remarks on PL collapsible covers of 2-dimensional polyhedra (Q2176714)

Recall that the LS category of a topological space \(X\), denoted cat\((X)\), is the minimum cardinality of a cover of \(X\) by open sets which are contractible in \(X\). The geometric category gcat\((X)\) is the minimum number of open contractible sets that cover \(X\). It is easy to see that the geometric category is an upper bound for the LS category. For a polyhedron \(P\), its geometric category coincides with the minimum number of contractible subpolyhedra that cover \(P\). In this paper, the author present a variant of the geometric category for a compact connected polyhedron \(P\). Explicitly, the \textit{PL geometric category} of \(P\), denoted plgcat\((P)\), is the minimum number of PL collapsible subpolyhedra that cover \(P\). He studies this invariant for polyhedra \(P\) of dimension \(2\). In particular, he shows plgcat\((P)\in\{1,2,3\}\). By Proposition 2.10, if plgcat\((P)=2\), then \(P\) \(3\)-deforms to the suspension of a graph. From Theorem 2.18, if \(P\) is an inner-connected polyhedron which is regular both in a local and a global sense, then plgcat\((P)=3\). Moreover, when \(P=K_\mathcal{P}\) is a one-relator presentation complex, where \(\mathcal{P}=\langle x_1,\ldots,x_k\mid r\rangle\) is a one-relator presentation, he proves that \(K_\mathcal{P}\) can be covered by two PL collapsible subpolyhedra if and only if \(r\) admits an algebraic collapse or \(\mathcal{P}\) is of the form \(\langle x\mid (xx^{-1})^{\pm 1} \rangle\) (Theorem 3.4).